The police followed up on an early morning phone call and they found a black Mercedes, half submerged in the Stieltjeskanaal in Coevorden on the morning of Friday 31 March 2017. Authorities suspect someone had tried to push the car into the canal, but the towbar got stuck against the edge of the canal. The police conducted a research in and around the vehicle, when they opened the boot of the car, they made a gruesome discovery. It contained the badly battered, bundled up, dead body of a man. According to the police, it was clear that the man was murdered in a horrific way.